Contents:

On the basis of empirical data for the Swiss market this paper confirms the hypothesis that the lower direct costs of online trading (brokerage) are cancelled out by higher indirect costs (in the form of information processing costs). In addition, the report provides evidence that during the sampling period online investors earned above-average returns and had above-average financial expertise at their disposal. Besides the cost aspect, the time used for information gathering and the benefits derived from this are also considered, alongside such elements as play, control and social interaction. The study also documents that online investors trade more frequently and are more speculative. These results can be better explained by the illusion of knowledge than by a rational behaviour approach. The findings relating to the returns and know-how of private investors show major differences between the Swiss market and similar studies for US investors.

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:2002-iv-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Peter Steiner)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.